The worm whipped in her direction.
Think it through . . . and forget the fact that I'm thundering toward a creature that can feel me coming.
The worm shot straight at her. She threw the dagger--a move that would have been so much smarter if she'd accepted any of those dagger-throwing lessons Moria had tried to foist on her.
The dagger sailed harmlessly off to the side as the worm sailed toward her. She froze then. Went completely still and sent up a prayer to the spirits--
The worm seemed to rear up suddenly. Then its head flew, hewed from its body, with Ronan standing behind it, still swinging his blade.
Ashyn watched as the two pieces of the worm twitched on the sand. When they went still, she took a deep shuddering breath as Ronan cleaned his blade.
"We need to go," she said. "Quickly. Before another comes."
"That was the same one," he said, gesturing at the worm.
"What? No. You killed . . ."
She moved forward, being careful not to step in whatever was seeping from the worm's torso. That torso had both ends cut clean.
She heard Moria whisper, "Beware if you chop off a death worm's head. It has another in its tail, teeth and all, and it'll come back. And then you'll have an even bigger problem, because the part you chopped off? It will--"
Across the campsite, she could see the first head segment twitching. Regenerating.
She pointed. "It's coming back. This one will, too. We need to--"
"Take the girl. Start moving."
"You can't kill--"
"I'm not going to try," he said. "Now move."
There was even less time for Ashyn to perform a ritual for the dead now. She had to do it as they ran, moving as fast as they could while staying far from the sand. Ashyn suspected death worms could not truly gnaw through rock, as her sister claimed. By this point, though, she wasn't taking any chances.
First shadow stalkers. Then death worms. Both had featured prominently in her sister's stories, along with snow dragons and thunder hawks and fiend dogs--
Perhaps it's best not to recite the entire list. While she was quite certain she could not conjure the beasts merely by imagining them, she was not going to tempt fate.
Finally, around midmorning, they had to stop. Wenda's legs had given out long ago, and neither Ashyn nor Ronan could carry the child another step. They rested past midday, then started off again.
They said little as they walked. Ashyn wanted to talk to Ronan about the death worms, but she didn't dare in front of Wenda, for fear of frightening her all the more.
Beatrix and Gregor were dead. They were truly the only survivors of Edgewood.
No, she reminded herself each time the thought surfaced. The children were alive. And Moria.
They ran out of water before nightfall. They'd tried to drink sparingly, but the sun beat down on the lava plains. So they'd drunk what they needed, and soon it was gone. After they made camp, Ronan set out in search of water, but Ashyn knew there was little chance he'd find it. They'd been scouring the horizon all day for any sign of greenery.
When Ronan returned with nothing, they decided to sleep and make an early start of it. Ronan thought they were only a day or two from Fairview. They'd try to travel in the morning and evening, resting under the midday sun.
She stayed with Wenda until the girl fell asleep. She'd spent the day reassuring and calming the child. Once Wenda slept, Ashyn went over to where Ronan sat guard atop a boulder.
"You'll wake me so I can take a turn?" she said as Ronan patted Tova's head. "When the moon reaches its zenith?"
He nodded unconvincingly.
"You must," she said. "We need you to be rested. In case anything else happens. I'm not . . ." She looked down at the dagger, held awkwardly at her side. "I didn't follow my lessons the way Moria did. As I'm sure you could tell."
"You did fine."